Welcome to Your Third Cup of Tea
Presentation to First-Year Students, November 2008
By President Tom Galligan
As part of New Student Orientation in September 2008, students and many others in the college
community read Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace One School at a Time by Greg
Mortenson. As part of orientation, the students were invited to three different “cups of tea” events from
September to November to discuss the book and their process of joining a new community.
Welcome to your third cup of tea. I know by this time
you are all perhaps just a little bit sick of the book
“Three Cups of Tea.” You know it inside and out. Bear
with me for the next few minutes. You know that it is
about the great things one person can accomplish in the
world if he or she has big dreams. It is about how much
people can improve the lives of other people through
their commitment, hard work and generosity.
One wonderful thing about this world is that one person
really can accomplish an incredible amount if they put
their mind to it. Just think back to last week and the
election. For the first time ever in American history, a
multi-racial person, an African-American, was elected
president. And President-elect Barack Obama came from humble financial origins. What he
managed to do says a great deal about what’s possible in our country and in our world. And for
you McCain supporters in the room, let’s not leave him out. He was a vibrant, aggressive
campaigner for the nation’s highest office, despite being 72 years old, having suffered torture as
a prisoner of war, and having survived cancer.
Closer to home, I think of Susan Colby, who in 1837 became the first head of school at Colby
Academy in New London, N.H., and who saw our school through its formative years. I also
think of H. Leslie Sawyer, who was our college’s first president from 1929—the year the Great
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Depression began—until 1955. He saw us through our transition to a college, the Great
Depression, World War II, and the start of the Cold War. I have read about him and heard about
him and everyone—to a person—has positive things to say. On the human level, Beth Crockford
tells me that Mrs. Sawyer used to make her cookies as a little girl and that you could hear the
television at the Sawyers’ house through the walls because he had to turn it up loud so he could
hear it. These folks, Barrack Obama, John McCain, Susan Colby and Leslie Sawyer, like Greg
Mortenson, made positive differences in people’s lives. They embody the powerful strength of
the human spirit at the heart of the story in “Three Cups of Tea.”
You also know that “Three Cups of Tea” is about
understanding another culture and being part of a
culture far from home. On that score, we have a very
special guest with us this year, Dr. Isaac Nyamongo.
Dr. Nyamongo is Colby-Sawyer’s first Fulbright
Scholar-in-Residence. The Fulbright Scholar program
welcomes scholars from other countries to American
colleges and sends American scholars overseas to be at
schools in the rest of the world. Dr. Nyamongo is
director of African Studies at the University of Nairobi
in Nairobi, Kenya. Here he will be teaching and
working with our Environmental Studies programs and
Dr. Isaac Nyamongo
others and speaking and teaching us about health,
sickness and healing in Africa. We are very fortunate to have him here, and I would now like to
ask him to stand and be recognized. Isaac, we are all very glad you are here and hope very much
that your year-long adventure with us is as good and fun for you as we know it will be for us.
Dr. Nyamongo actually arrived on campus after you did earlier this fall so he is newer than you
are to Colby-Sawyer. What does that mean? It means you are no longer new to our community.
And in a few months, we will welcome transfer students, and it will be up to you to help them
adjust to campus. All of that is a way of saying that your new student tag or label has already
expired. You are now full-fledged members of the Colby-Sawyer College community.
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Switching gears back to the book, you also know that “Three Cups of Tea” is about one person’s
search for meaning and love in this incomprehensible world. It is about trying to learn a little bit
of humility and trying to be patient as one goes through the process of learning and growing and
accomplishing. You also know, whether you want to admit it or not, that learning, growing and
accomplishing is not easy. We may want it to be easy, but we all know that it is better in the end
if it is challenging. If it isn’t hard then there is probably not a lot of learning, growing and
accomplishing going on. And if there is not a lot of learning, growing and accomplishing going
on, then there is probably not a whole lot of change going on. Do you think it was easy for
Barrack Obama, John McCain, Susan Colby, Leslie Sawyer or Greg Mortenson?
Remember page 150 in the book. Greg Mortenson wants to get going on building schools, and
he wants to get going fast. Remember what I told you in my convocation speech—time flies—
teeder fleegin. And Greg Mortenson is cognizant of time flying and does not want to waste any
precious time. He wants to do it his way. He thinks that if he can get going faster it will be
better. Recall what Haji Ali says to him:
“If you want to survive in Baltistan, you must respect our ways… The first time you share tea
with a Balti, you are a stranger. The second time you take tea, you are an honored guest. The
third time you share a cup of tea, you become family, and for our family, we are prepared to do
anything, even die…Doctor Greg, you must take time to share three cups of tea.”
Well, even though time flies, you must take time to share three cups of tea. You must take time
to learn and understand the culture you are entering. Greg Mortenson does not want to wait.
Tom Petty says that the waiting is the hardest part. Well, the waiting is very hard for Greg
Mortenson. For him, waiting becomes a real challenge. Like many Americans, he just wants to
get going. But it is in the waiting that he learns the most about himself and the culture he is
working in. It is the waiting and the learning that, in many ways, ends up making him effective.
He is able to get done what he gets done because by rising to the challenge—waiting and
reaching an understanding—he becomes part of the cultural landscape and is thus able to
accomplish so much more.
Taking time to learn and understand the culture a person is entering is one of the reasons why we
decided to extend orientation at Colby-Sawyer this fall. We used to welcome the first-year class
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on Friday, do orientation over the weekend and then tell
everyone on Sunday night that they were oriented, ready,
prepared and fully part of the community. Well, I know
darn well and so do you that nobody gets oriented to a new
place that quickly, and so to be honest with you and
ourselves, and to try very hard to help you succeed here,
and feel welcome and a part of our college family, we
extended our orientation throughout the fall. In many
ways our old system did not challenge our students
enough; it rushed them through the orientation process and
then claimed to be complete even though we all knew
better. This year we have extended the program, and I
hope that by extending it we have challenged you. This
First-year students headed to Convocation
in September 2008.
year, we took the time to offer you three cups of tea. The first cup encouraged you to focus on
diversity, culture, the role of the United States in the world, and more. I hope it made you think.
The second cup of tea forced you to look at poverty, disease, health care and other difficult
issues. It was not comfortable. Addressing hard issues and reflecting upon one’s response to
them never is. If you want to change the world, you probably have to change yourself in the
process, and neither one of those transitions is ever comfortable.
And tonight is the third cup. Tonight it is my great pleasure to offer you the third cup of tea.
Tonight it is my treat to close orientation and fully welcome you to Colby-Sawyer. But while I
welcome you fully to our college community—remember your new student ticket is invalid as of
this evening—I want to keep challenging you. I want you to keep thinking about the difference
you can make here and in the wider world. One of the funny things about change, challenge,
learning, growing and accomplishing is that as you change, you can change the world around
you. I venture to say again that the challenge of being patient and having three cups of tea
changed Greg Mortenson but it was that personal change that then facilitated the change in the
world around him. So, I hope that while you continue to grow and change here, you will also
work to change this college. You will work to make us better.
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You have already done much to make us
better. You have worked to get the vote out and
voted. You have been as incredibly engaged a
class as we have had in a good while. You have
excelled in athletic competition already. You
have come from all around the world and helped
us internationalize our campus in an
unprecedented manner. Keep it up. In just two
Zhu “Julia” Ye and Binyao Ye, first year students
from China
semesters you will be participating in your
Sophomore Pathway. When you get together as
a group in January 2010, how will you tell your colleagues that you have made a difference here?
Will you have made a greener campus? Will we have reduced our paper usage? Will we recycle
more? Will you have achieved the highest GPA ever at Colby-Sawyer through your first three
semesters? Will you have created a new club? Set an athletic record? Written a play?
Performed in the Dance Show? Given a speech in public even though you are afraid of public
speaking? Learned how to swim? Volunteered with disadvantaged children? I could go on.
But, instead, I’d like to bring it back to me and a family story about learning, growth,
accomplishment and challenge—all in the context of the fact that if you want to change or grow
or accomplish something, it is sometimes a little uncomfortable. So, here’s my story.
Actually, I thought first about telling you a story about my first year in college and how my
mother passed away and my first real girlfriend broke up with me, and how I was 3000 miles
from home without a car and without much money. And while it is a pretty good story, I thought
you would think I was feeling sorry for myself. So instead I chose a story about my youngest
daughter, Jennifer—a story that is still in process. Because it is a story in process my wife Susan
said I should not tell it because I do not know how it ends, but I told her that was OK because
any real story—even one told with a little dose of literary license—is an ongoing story that
hasn’t ended yet. So I am going to tell you a story about Jennifer that has no ending because the
story is not over yet. We still don’t really know how it will work out.
Jennifer is 16 and a junior in high school. She has a driver’s license, and she thinks she is pretty
special and pretty mature and pretty self confident. But she was not always so self-confident.
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When she was younger she very much hated to be away from us, especially her mother, and she
would sometimes feel sick to her stomach when we went out and her three older siblings—
Patrick, Sarah, and Aisling—would either have to deal with it or would call us and let us know
that Jenny was crying and did not feel well. Sometimes it would be so bad that we would have
to go home from wherever we were. As we hoped, she slowly got over it as she got older.
Then, a few years ago when she was about 11, she went off to camp for two weeks; she went to
the same camp one of her friends was going to. The rule at the camp was that cell phones were
supposed to be embargoed and unavailable, but somehow my daughter, Jennifer, who can be
very convincing, got her counselor to let her have her cell phone. And then every night we
would get phone calls from Jenny with a tear in her voice and a sniffle—or worse—telling us
how miserable camp was, how she did not feel well (the stomach problems again), how she
wanted to come home. We got a couple of letters from her—she is definitely the best letter
writer in the family, having inherited the trait, I believe, from my late father. Her letters told us
how bad the weather was, how bad the food was, and how she had clearly made a terrible
mistake attending the camp. Well, the two weeks finally came to an end, and her sister Aisling,
brother Patrick, and I set off to pick her up.
Upon arriving, I had every notion that we would be at the camp for about five minutes—just long
enough for Jenny to throw her bags into the car and race away from the hated place. Boy, was I
wrong! We were there for about two hours, making our way from place to place, hall to hall,
field to field so that we could be introduced to her friends, counselors and camp leaders. Tears
of separation were shed. As we drove away, I presented Jennifer with what I saw as the
inconsistency between the phone calls and the letters and the length and feeling of the goodbyes.
Aisling giggled at my question. I waited anxiously for the answer.
Jennifer sighed in exasperation. “Dad,” she said. “Camp was hard but you have to realize, some
of what I told you was only venting. I have to vent, you know.” And then she went right back to
the Harry Potter book we had brought her and which had been released while she was camping.
I appreciated the message. It was hard; I did it; and as a parent, you should be pleased that I
vent to you.
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Now jump forward with me to Jenny’s first
year of high school. She is a day student at a
boarding school—Proctor Academy—which is
right down the road in Andover. At her
school, everyone must go on a three- or fourday backpacking trip at the time they begin
school. It is part of the orientation process and
a graduation requirement. Jenny is not a
backpacker or a camper, and she was a bit
Proctor Academy in Andover, N.H.
nervous about the trip. But you know what? She survived; she even saw a moose.
Now, let’s move to the present, or at least closer to the present. Last year, Jennifer came home
one night and told us she wanted to go on something her school participates in called Ocean
Classroom. What is it? Sixty-five days on a traditional sailboat, or what I would call a schooner,
sailing from Maine to Puerto Rico. I assume you will not be surprised when I tell you that Jenny
is not a sailor and not a boat person.
Anyway, we did not try and dissuade her other than to say: “Are you sure?”
“Yes, I am,” she said.
Well, sometime last March or so, she applied, was accepted, and informed us she was going to
go. And she did it all with confidence. In fact, she told us that for the first time in the history of
her school there would be two schooners not just one, and 40 of her closest friends were all
going. And actually, two of her very closest friends and a boy upon whom she had a crush were
going. But at that point no one knew which boat they would be on. We would not know that
until later.
As summer began, the fall seemed like a long time away and we settled into our lives. Aisling
was home from college and for Jennifer there was driver’s ed and sleeping late. As the days
passed, Susan and Jennifer bought her stuff for the trip—rain gear, flashlights, a knife and more.
As the fall got closer we could all feel the tension building.
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Jenny found out what boat she would be on. It turned out
she would be with one of her very close friends but not a
couple of others and not the boy—you know, the crush
boy. Then, as the first of September arrived with just 16
days until departure, the stress became palpable. Jennifer
was clearly nervous and clearly afraid. She was
definitely having second thoughts, and she was starting to
get a little quiver in her voice. You know, that little fear
sound that could be the start of a cry.
On Sept. 14, we dropped her off at a cabin her school
owns in the woods for a three-day orientation; we hugged
This Schooner serves as part of Proctor
Academy’s Ocean Classroom.
her and we drove off. We were all a little sad but we also
knew we would see her three days later in Maine—Booth Bay Harbor—as we said goodbye and
she sailed off. I would imagine that those three days in the cabin in the woods being oriented
were her first cup of tea. And drinking that first cup she somehow managed to cut her finger.
On Wednesday, Susan, Aisling and I drove to Maine on a beautiful early fall day. We got to the
boat, which had just come out of dry dock—the place they rebuild and repair boats. We saw
Jenny; we saw her friends; we saw their families. We listened to the captain and the teachers
talk. We checked out both boats. We saw the little area in the bow where Jenny and three of her
soon-to-be closest friends would sleep—you know, the bow is the roughest and wettest part
of a sailboat.
And we all saw something else—Jenny has these big sort of Tom Cruise “Top Gun” aviator
mirror sunglasses, and she did not take them off almost the entire time we were with her. I can
tell you why that is—it was because I bet her eyes were red, and there were a whole bunch of
tears going on—tears of separation, tears of trepidation, tears of wondering whether she could do
it or not. We hugged her and said “have fun.”
Now, parents are a little bit like we were at Colby-Sawyer before we extended our orientation—
not always very realistic. As Jenny’s parents we hoped that we would hug her; we would cry a
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little; she would cry a little and then it would all be fine and all the fun would start. Yeah, yeah!
Well, that just is not realistic. That would take the challenge out of it.
And there was indeed challenge. It turns out that, according to the Coast Guard, Jenny’s boat
was not quite ready to come out of dry dock and needed more repairs; thus, rather than sail off
into the sunset that day, we bid her adieu, and she had to wait in Maine for a day or so until they
got another boat to take her boat’s place. So Jenny and her compatriots temporarily loaded all
their stuff into another boat and had to sail around New England until their boat was repaired.
They went from Maine to Mystic, Conn., to Cape Cod, to Boston, back to Cape Cod, back to
Boston. Susan drove down to visit in Mystic, and it was a rough day. Jennifer was homesick—
as a day student she was not just at sea, but she was also away from home for the first time other
than those wonderful weeks at camp. She was also seasick. Remember the stomach stuff—you
knew she’d get seasick, right! By the time Susan visited, Jenny had not only thrown up but she
had thrown up on her own pants and they—those awful people—had made her clean it up
herself. To make matters worse, her best friend on board was not seasick at all! And on top of it
all, Jennifer had a cold.
I got to talk to her on the phone and because of the cold and the tears I
could barely understand a word—congestion and quiver and even
sobbing. Maybe we should just take her home, I thought, but I did not
say it.
Jenny told Susan that she wanted to come home, and Susan said she could say that as much as
she wanted, but Jenny really did not want that. Amidst a good cry, Jenny agreed.
Jennifer left again; we got a letter. It was no better. She still had a cold; she still was homesick;
her stomach was a little better. She drew a frowning face at the bottom. I think Jenny was in the
middle of her second cup of tea. But it was not necessarily a happy family.
We got another letter. The tone was only slightly better. Susan had told Jenny that when she felt
bad she should put a pencil in her mouth because it would make her smile. In the letter, Jenny
said that she had a pencil in her mouth, and it was not helping at all. The face she drew at the
bottom of the page was not frowning—it had a straight but squiggly line for a mouth.
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Now, because of all the boat problems and the New England cruise, Jenny’s crew and boat were
way north of the other one which had wound its way down the coast to the Chesapeake Bay.
Back in Boston, the original boat was repaired and Jenny’s crew loaded back on—it turned out
the original boat was smaller than the substitute and even leakier. No matter. Jenny and her
bunkmates had packed diapers in the top of their bunk area to sop up water. Next for them was
to sail straight from Boston to Charleston—eight days at sea!
Right before she left we got a call: she was scared of the eight days; she did not want to be
seasick again; and could we please send her some money? Money: a good sign.
Then came the call from Charleston more than one week later. They had gone 500 miles off the
coast to avoid hurricanes; she had swum in 10,000 feet of water. She forgot what a shower felt
like. She had been strapped to the mast during her watch so she would not fall overboard. She
had thrown up three times but that was OK because Hannah somebody or other had thrown up
20 times. The money had come. And so had a package with stuff and a letter from me and a
note from her mother on an index card—Susan is not much of a letter writer. Jenny said:
“Thanks for the stuff, Mom, and the money and thanks to Dad for the letter. But, Mom, an index
card! Come on! I take the time to write you a letter, can’t you do better than an index card?”
Things were looking up.
But then the next call from Georgia came and there were more tears; something involving the
crush boy and one of her friends and who knows what, but if I share any more on that score, she
will kill me, so I will move on.
Later, we got a wonderful, positive upbeat call. Jenny had settled in at sea and was on her way
to Puerto Rico. On Friday, Susan heard from her, and she had been hit by a mast sail, had a fat
lip, and had also only recently used her knife for the first time and cut her finger. Despite
those adventures, she was happy, having fun, and still excited about seeing us soon. Last night,
as if she knew about this talk, she called again: on a stolen phone. The cut was deep. She had
been to a clinic and was on antibiotics. The hand felt better. They were in Puerto Rico and
taking day sails. She had a lot of homework and tests and reports all coming due – sound
familiar? And even though she is stressed, she knows she will get it done. She also has told us
she’s served as junior watch commander and has been in charge of sailing the boat into the
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harbor and setting it to anchor, i.e., she was responsible for telling everyone else what to do,
something she’s very good at.
I believe at this point that Jennifer has had her third cup of tea at sea. I believe she is beginning
to understand the world and the culture of which she is a part. Now she is still our daughter, but
she is also a key and meaningful part of a crew sailing a ship from Maine to San Juan, Puerto
Rico. Now, those people on her boat are her family too. I hope that the same is true for you at
Colby-Sawyer. I hope you feel now as we do—that you are family; that you are a key and full
member of this college community.
How does Jenny’s story at sea turn out? I don’t know. Like your story here, it is not over yet; it
is just reaching a new stage, a stage of hopefully fuller and more complete involvement. I won’t
know how this part of her story turns out until I see her again on the Saturday before
Thanksgiving at Logan Airport, Nov. 22. And I won’t know how your story at Colby-Sawyer
turns out for a couple of years, but I am happy you are here and have all the confidence you will
continue to do great things here.
Today we celebrate your total arrival and inclusion in our community, and we celebrate the
future with the third cup of tea. I know it won’t always be easy, and I know that if we did not
challenge you we would not be doing our job. But I also know you will change us and challenge
us and make us better. I am glad you are here. Today, you are family.
Thank you.
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